autumn yumminess

Another artistic cup o' coffee and a pumpkin spice muffin added to the cosiness of being inside on this dripping day.

A little cloth envelope, complete with a star button, holding a b-day coupon for my favorite store arrived in the post!

My first attempt at the Tuscan white bean/escarole soup.  Perfect food for today!

$.02

Finally!  After finding 0 coinage for several days, I found two pennies today!

Elegant autumnal staging for the other penny.

I still swoon over my view.

Why, yes, it is another shot of Rainier.  Sorry--after staring at the power lines in New Jersey for two years, it is delightful to see two mountains from my balcony.

the lesson is fumble

It's been of those weeks where I've felt tweaked, slammed, and poked by the inability to serenely sail through bumps that could teach me patience and all manner of calm living.  I don't know that I wish for thicker skin--sensitivity being a huge part of who I am and what I do, but I do wish I were better at shrugging off things and tossing out a casual 'meh' and going about my day.

Ah.  Well.  Here's to a new calendar page and beginning again.

Was it dissatisfaction or hope
that beckoned some of the monkeys
down from the trees and onto the damp
forbidden musk of the forest floor?

Which one tested his thumbs
against the twig
and awkwardly dug a grub
from the soil?

What did the tribe above think
as it leaned on the slender branches
watching the others
frustrated, embarrassed,
but pinching grubs
with leathery fingers
into their mouths?

The moral is movement
is awkward. The lesson is fumble.


"Evolution" by Eliza Griswold, from Wideawake Field. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

grey & greyer

If you squint, you will see the first snow sprinkled on my mountains.   Yes, I've decided that since it's 'my' lake at which I stare every morning, that the mountains beyond it are also probably mine.  

I think the colours pop a bit more on this gloomy days--love standing under a brilliantly-leaved tree and staring upwards.  Pretty sure my neighbors think of me as the demented girl who stands and stares--both at the sky and at the ground.  But I'm happy to be developing eccentricities well before my nursing home years.

Gorgeous little water beads.

options

Trying to decide which quote from my reading to post, so decided to post them both and let you choose which one resonates with you today.

"But how can I accept that bliss when it comes with this dark underside--bone-crushing isolation, corrosive insecurity, insidious resentment and, of course, the complete dismantling of self that inevitably occurs...."

"You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight."  E. Gilbert

finding delight through the feet

After walking through blocks of red and yellow leaves, this patch of green ones made me pause.

I don't know if Nietzsche's thought that "all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking" is true, but I know that walking always clears my head.  I am in my fourth year of a mainly pedestrian (walking, not banal) life and I don't ever want to go back to a car-centric life.

V. cool to actually hear waves crashing at Lake Washington.

Have walked past Oh! Chocolate for the past year and as it was pouring rain in the middle of my walk, I finally ducked inside.  Delightful shop and talkative owner.  May take a chocolate class there this winter.

check, check, and check

A wildly windy day; an auspicious moment to light candles and make soup and find a favorite book with which to spend a quality afternoon.

"I figure if I have my health,

can pay the rent

and I have my friends, 

I call it 'content'."  

Lauren Bacall

when the frost

"WHEN the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock"...well, there is no frost, but there was a wild storm last night.  But my nasturtiums are still valiantly blooming. 

 

Seems odd to have tomatoes ripening as we approach Halloween, but I will take a vine-ripened tomato at any time of the year.

First batch of caramel for the season.  YUM!

back to the Arboretum

"I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water. 

The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air."
-  Theodore Roethke, The Far Field     

 “He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination
is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.”
-   Henry James  

"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand, shadowless like Silence, listening
To Silence."
-   Thomas Hood

"The leaves fall patiently
Nothing remembers or grieves
The river takes to the sea
The yellow drift of leaves."
-   Sara Teasdale

eve ensler

This poem is found at the end of her newest book in which she writes fictional monologues and stories inspired by girls around the globe. 

I Am An Emotional Creature

I love being a girl.

I can feel what you're feeling

as you're feeling it inside

the feeling

before.

I am an emotional creature.

Things do not come to me

as intellectual theories or hard-shaped ideas.

They pulse through my organs and legs

and burn up my ears.

I know when your girlfriend's really pissed off

even though she appears to give you what

      you want.

I know when a storm is coming.

I can feel the invisible stirrings in the air.

I can tell you he won't call back.

It's a vibe I share.

I am an emotional creature.
I love that I do not take things lightly.
Everything is intense to me.
The way I walk in the street.
The way my mother wakes me up.
The way I hear bad news.
The way it's unbearable when I lose.....

This is not extreme.

It's a girl thing.

What we would all be

if the big door inside us flew open.

Don't tell me not to cry

To calm it down

Not to be so extreme

To be reasonable.

I am an emotional creature.

It's how the earth got made.

How the wind continues to pollinate.

You don't tell the Atlantic Ocean

to behave.....

I love that I can feel the inside

of the feelings in you,

even if it stops my life

even if it hurts too much

or takes me off track

even if it breaks my heart.

It makes me responsibile.

I am an emotional

I am an emotional, devotional,

incandotional creature.

And I love, hear me,

love love love

being a girl.

sing along

the autumn leeeeeaves

drift by my winnnndooooow

the autumn leaves of red and goooold

another penny found, another miniature delight

morning of musing

A lovely walk along a serene lake this morning, while chewing over this quote:  "Losing today's battle does not mean losing tomorrow's war."

I don't know if you can read the scrawl above, but our post man just amuses me with his dire warnings of mail mishaps while he's away.  (and may I just state that he seems to spend a great deal of time, sitting on the lobby sofa, reading the mail?)

walking through the daze/ys

Penny found,

penny & wish tossed over the left shoulder

Still surprises me to see how clear the water is next to a city.

I've been walking around and staring at this sculpture (Schubert's Sonata) for over a year and I still don't see Schubert or a sonata.  Once in awhile, I'll get a sense of a violin.

fun rain drops outside the Sculpture Garden's cafe

wealth

It's been a rich week, being bookended by two fabulous author events.  Yesterday was a small reading by Michael Cunningham.  The best part was, although he read a bit from his novel for which he is on tour, he read an entire chapter from the one that he is writing right now.  He read with a pen and edited on the spot as we responded.  

That inspiring hour was followed by a lovely thrift store hunt with a friend which yielded a beautiful brown lace skirt.  Now we just need continued autumn weather in which to wear it.

my love affair with autumn continues

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. 

~Stanley Horowitz
 

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
 
~John Donne
 

Bittersweet October.  The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.  

~Carol Bishop Hipps

 

It occurred to me that I ought to document the actual sighting of the coinage, lest one think that I am merely recycling the same coin month/month.